Comrade Baron : a journey through the vanishing world of the Transylvanian aristocracy
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Comrade Baron : a journey through the vanishing world of the Transylvanian aristocracy
Helena History Press , Central European University Press, c2016
- : [pbk]
- Other Title
-
Kameraad Baron : een reis door de verdwijnende wereld van de Transsylvaanse aristocratie
Available at / 2 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Originally published: Amsterdam : Atlas Contact, 2010
Includes bibliographical references (p. 397-401)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the darkness of the early morning of 3 March 1949, practically all of the Transylvanian aristocracy were arrested in their beds and loaded into lorries. That same day the Romanian Workers' Party was pleased to announce the successful deportation and dispossession of all large landowners. Communism demanded the destruction of these ultimate class enemies. Under the terror of Gheorghiu-Dej and later Ceausescu the aristocracy led a double life: during the day they worked in quarries, steelworks and carpenters' yards; in the evening they secretly gathered and maintained the rituals of an older world. To record this unknown episode of recent history, Jaap Scholten travelled extensively in Romania and Hungary and sought out the few remaining aristocrats who experienced the night of 3 March 1949. He spoke to people who survived the Romanian Gulag and met the youngest generation of the once distinguished aristocracy to talk about the restitution of assets and about the future. How is it possible to rebuild anything in a country that finds itself in a moral vacuum?
Table of Contents
Note to the English edition
Comrade Baron - Introduction
Part 1 They were counted
The song of thorn birds
Nicolai the pet bear
Where the moon took us
The wolves come up to the monastery wall
You're an ambassador, I'm a minister
Back to her father's country
The honeymoon is over
Puss in Boots
After his death, wagonloads of books kept arriving
Purdeys, plus fours and whist
Forbidden love
For four years we did nothing but dance
The hand-kiss
Part 2 They were divided
I heard the dogs barking
Charlady offers her services
Bridal suites and celibacy tax
The destruction of the elite
Seventeen truckloads of Banffy treasures
You can dump us at the North Pole and we'll still survive
It is part of me
Thursday afternoon, five o'clock
The horses were eaten
Looking at cellars
No one in Armenierstadt speaks Armenian now
I shared a bed with the archbishop of the
Greek Orthodox Church
Enemies of the people
Scapegoats and informants
Kis contesa
A workers' paradise without workers
The Danube - Black Sea Canal
Part 3 They were found wanting
Beetroot and champagne
Castles returned
Hunting for truffles with the new generation
The Transylvanian Chambord
Take the battery out of your phone
The Romanian nouveaux riches anno
Everyone talked about that fairytale
Bear hunting with Ceausescu
Staying with the Prince of Wales
I have to look into her soul for the secret
A class dying out
Back to Bonchida and Zabola
A well-mannered bear
I am the last
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Photographs and illustrations
Chronological overview
Glossary
Important geographical names
Main figures and interviewees
by "Nielsen BookData"